Belafonte lashes 'house slave' Powell for serving Bush

The singer and activist Harry Belafonte has accused the United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, of selling out his race by joining the Bush Administration.

The attack came during a radio interview in San Diego on Tuesday when Mr Belafonte ripped into Mr Powell for belonging to President George Bush's administration.

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The veteran singer and leading political and anti-apartheid activist compared Mr Powell to a slave on an old southern cotton plantation who had become beholden to his "master".

Mr Belafonte, who like Mr Powell is of Jamaican descent, said: "There's an old saying. In the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and there were those slaves that lived in the house.

"You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master ... exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him," he said, according to a transcript on radio station KFMB's website.

There was no immediate response from Mr Powell.

Mr Belafonte also criticised other members of the Bush Administration, comparing the tactics of the Justice Department with those used during the McCarthy communist "witch-hunt" era of the 1950s.

"Families were destroyed, neighbours spied on neighbours," he said. "Now we find [the Attorney-General, John] Ashcroft cutting in under the guise of catching terrorists, suspending liberties and rights.

"To deny those rights, to any citizen, to any people, is to cast a great shame on us and lead us back to another dark period." There have been protests that US civil liberties are being eroded by the Government's "war on terror".

Mr Belafonte was a huge star of the 1950s and 1960s, best known for his song Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), which popularised calypso music.

He now serves as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund.